Abstract:
Ecotourism belongs to the category of natural education and ecological experience and is the natural park practice with the priority of protection and public welfare. But how to develop ecological tourism and to evaluate the ecological, economic and social values is the reasearch focus of the giant panda park construction, and is also one of the difficulties that plague nature conservation managers. This paper is based on the ecological tourism projects, the number of visitors and economic benefits gained by observation and data since 1980s, when ecological tourism practice in Wolong area of Giant Panda National Park has been developed. We summarized and analyzed the experiences and lessons from the process of practices. The single panda-viewing tourism was transferred to a diversified experience and eco-tourism activities, a diversified experience and ecotourism activities, community co-management coupled with protection and development, and the introduction of social capital for coordinated cooperative development; the development of eco-tourism brings economic benefits to the local area and promotes the adjustment of rural industrial structure. However, frequent earthquakes and secondary disasters have caused huge losses to the local tourism, and the increase of visitors also brought difficulties in the artificial management and control of the protected areas. The scale expansion of “Nongjiale” is not directly proportional to the investment returns. The sustainable development of Wolong ecotourism faces severe challenges during the pilot period of National Parks. Therefore, several suggestions were put forward to develop ecotourism in Wolong district of National Park in the future: 1) Scientific planning of functional zoning, coordinated development of nature conservation and community economy; 2) Controlling the visitors’ behavioral footprint, and the spatial-temporal coordination between ecotourism development and community production; 3) Implement franchises management system and explore new ways of development and management of national park ecotourism; 4) Strengthening ecotourism management and service, community management and villager autonomy complement; 5) Implement the innovation of management system and mechanism to provide institutional guarantee for the practice of eco-tourism. This paper has a positive guiding significance for future development of the nature education and ecological experience activities featuring the giant panda in the future in the Giant Panda National Park.